Boris Johnson’s first PMQs: The verdict
If Boris Johnson thought that things could get no worse after losing his first Commons vote, his majority, and his control over the parliamentary agenda in one fell swoop, he was sorely mistaken.
In a near record-length PMQs yesterday, the new Prime Minister was well and truly ripped apart.
First Jeremy Corbyn – displaying an intellect hitherto entirely unsuspected – skewered him with uncharacteristically direct questions.
Then a number of MPs from the incongruously glamorous-sounding “rebel alliance” (former Tories stripped of the whip just the night before) were given their chance for a pop at his tattered remains.
Most of them wanted to know the details of the government’s new negotiating strategy and plan to replace the Irish backstop, but Boris was coy: over and over again he repeated that the government will not “negotiate in public”.
Has Boris has suddenly discovered the virtue of discretion? Or (whisper it) is there no plan at all, and the PM is employing the classic Johnsonian tactic of flying by the seat of his pants?
The only point to Boris was won in an exchange with John Bercow.
The speaker’s raison d’etre, it seems, is to inconvenience the Conservative front bench, and one of his tried and tested tricks involves interrupting a minister just as he or she reaches the climax of a speech to tell the House, in the most long-winded way possible, to be quiet.
In one move, he simultaneously disarms the minister, and insinuates to the rest of the House that they can’t control the Commons.
On Theresa May, this tactic worked a treat. After confusedly thanking him for his call to order, she would become flustered, and by the time she’d recovered momentum, almost everyone would had switched off.
On Boris, it backfired. Without missing a beat, he swatted away Bercow’s unnecessary interruption with a quick, good-natured quip, before continuing. The speaker seemed to visibly deflate before our eyes.
In a PMQs full of strangeness, it was a relief to watch Jo Swinson, Ian Blackford, and Dominic Grieve play their usual roles so predictably. Swinson asked a virtue-signalling non-question with the air of an affronted customer demanding to see the manager, Blackford succeeded in boring the whole excitable chamber into listless silence, and Dominic Grieve asked a question which precisely no one could understand.
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
But of the much-vaunted Periclean orator whose rhetoric can defy electoral forces, there was no sign. And don’t forget: depending on how the next few days pan out, Boris’ first PMQs could potentially be his last.
Main image credit: Getty